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Top ten lists are so 1996. Today we bring you the top 12 upcoming MMORPGs for 2013.

Update: I have an expanded edition of this list here which includes four more MMORPGs that are likely coming out this year (since these things are never delayed) that you should absolutely check out.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was an age of free-to-play games, it was an age of micro-transactions. It was the epoch of massively multiplayer online RPGs, it was the epoch of slowly fading single player RPGs. It was the season of sandbox MMOs, it was the season of same-old, same-old. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

So it is with the current landscape of MMORPGs, a genre already so congested, so saturated with content, and built on a business model that demands all of our precious gaming time or bust, that it's hard to imagine adding more titles to the already burgeoning list.

Fear not, developers and publishers are not to be dissuaded by such paltry things as market saturation or consumer fatigue. Perhaps that's well and good. 2013 is a year filled with actually interesting looking MMOs, games that promise to deliver something new, that blessed salve, some innovation or other that will propel us into the next generation of the massively multiplayer online gaming experience.

Phantasy Star Online 2 should be interesting. It will be available in 2013 on PC, iOS, Android, and the PlayStation Vita.

This is good news for the Vita in particular, which is a great little piece of hardware with far too few games. A free-to-play MMO can only help the little handheld.

The game is action-based, focusing on counter-attacks and real-time battles. I never played the original Phantasy Star Online, but the sequel certainly looks like something I'll download on to one of those very expensive proprietary memory chips the Vita uses.

City of Steam is an action-RPG with MMO elements. The steampunk setting separates it from most other MMOs on the market. Even MMOs with some steampunk elements tend to keep those features on the fringe.

The game just left Closed Beta, so an Open Beta should be just around the corner for players to play---in their browsers thanks to the Unity Web Player.

The browser-based game category is getting bigger and bigger, and City of Steam joins already popular MMOs like Drakensang Online sometime in 2013.

They're also trying to get the game Greenlit so it can appear, oh-so-fittingly, on Steam.

It's been in closed beta for centuries, but the free-to-play action-RPG Path of Exile is now in open beta, and will soon be released to the public in post-beta form (not sure what we're supposed to call it then.)

The dark, gritty action-RPG isn't really an MMO, but it is online, and you can find massive amounts of other players to quest with. For solitudinous hermits like your humble narrator, outside of town you can adventure solo to your heart's content.

The Third Act was released alongside the open beta, and I haven't played my way to it just yet (my characters were all wiped, as were everyone else's, and I haven't found time to get all leveled up again) but the new Act adds 50% more content to what was already a pretty decent-sized game. Developer Grinding Gear Games plans to continue to release new Acts and content regularly, while funding the game through "ethical" micro-transactions that are, so far as I can tell, almost entirely aesthetic.

Publisher Bigpoint is no stranger to browser-based MMOs, so I'm hoping the final product for Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms is as fun as it sounds.

The sandbox MMO is yet another sandbox style game, pitting three factions (the Baratheons, the Starks, and the Lanisters) against one another. You play as a regular warrior from a minor House and can pledge fealty to one of the major Houses, betray them whenever you like, and engage in massive castle sieges.

It sounds like it could be the very first Game of Thrones video game that might, in some small way, live up to the books. The game will feature some material from and consistency with the HBO show, though how that actually factors into gameplay remains to be seen.

ArcheAge is one of the coolest sounding MMOs I've read about. Not only is there full-fledged naval combat, there are also hang-gliders. You can race people on your hang-glider. And yeah, they had me at hang-glider. Or maybe at naval combat. Either way, I'm sold (at least in theory.)

The game is a great big sandbox MMO where you can build your own house, work with trade routes, and engage in PvP.

Whenever I start getting actually excited about an MMO I realize that I need to check my expectations, but ArcheAge is certainly doing a good job at making me want to play it.

Bless reminds me a lot of Guild Wars 2. It's built using the Unreal Engine 3, and it looks gorgeous. It's also supposed to be very story-driven, with a storyline for each of the ten races designed to be emotionally charged.

Whenever I see MMO screenshots that look as good as these, I always check my optimism. Guild Wars 2 looks really good, but the screenshots made it look better (a trick the original Guild Wars was also guilty of.)

After all, bandwidth is an issue when you're playing online, and an MMO can only deliver so much graphical goodness before the pipes get too clogged. But man, that elephant looks amazing doesn't it?

I'm not sure you can capture the old Wizardry games in an MMO. Without some severe limits, it's hard to capture any single-player experience in an MMO. Still, I loved the description of this intense-sounding MMO so much I downloaded it immediately.

"Wizardry Online is the most hardcore fantasy MMO ever created," reads the game description. "The difficulty level is insane. The dungeons are brutal. There is no auto-healing. You will earn your levels. Your crimes taint your soul. Your allies could betray you at any moment. And when you die, you die forever."

Permadeath in any game is hardcore, but in an MMO? That takes moxie. Kudos to Sony for taking chances.

I'll report back after I've played the game, which launched on January 30th, one of the few games in this list already available to the public.

Developer: Gamepot

Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment

[Update: I have now played Wizardry Online and it is nothing like what I thought it would be. It is, to be quite plain, a very bad game. Indeed, it's a surprisingly bad game. So strike it from your list. And if you've played it, be glad it was F2P.]

No classes, no levels, and no European medieval setting. In Age of Wushu, you play as a martial artist inside (yet another) sandbox world, though this time it's a beautiful East Asian setting.

The game is billed less as a grind-and-level game and more of a celebration of art and music and, yeah, intricate martial arts combat. You pick a martial arts style and then hone your craft. But you also pick a profession, and live as part of the world.

I like the idea of doing away with levels. I think RPGs in general crutch on the leveling system way too much. Go back to the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, and you'll learn rather quickly how unimportant levels used to be.

I'm not actually sure whether this is going to come out in 2013 (and honestly, with the nightmarish development involved in putting together an MMO, maybe none of these will come out in 2013 except the ones that, you know, already have) but it looks really cool.

A big, sandbox world, totally seamless, with sort of absurdly beautiful people apparently modeled after Skyrim mods, Black Desert has been one of the least-marketed games I've ever seen and has still managed to put together one of the most exciting MMO trailers I've ever seen---which you should go watch over here. Even if some of the elves look suspiciously like Orlando Bloom.

Finally, we come to the most controversial entry in our long, long list: The Elder Scrolls Online.

Many people worry that this could spell the doom of the single-player Elder Scrolls game. To that, I say pfaw! Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games sell far, far too many copies and expansions to die at the hands of a maybe-successful MMORPG.

Besides, TESO (for short) looks really good. Combat is overhauled, for one thing, and I'm not that big of a fan of the combat in games like Oblivion and Skyrim, so who knows? Maybe we'll see an evolutionary step that will actually translate to better single-player games from the franchise.

Just as importantly, TESO is huge, spanning all the Elder Scrolls realms. I'm not going to be stuck in gray, dreary Skyrim, or boring, generic Cyrodiil. I can go to Morrowind and beyond.

Just like with the rest of these games, there's no telling if it will be any good, or if it's good if it will capture a big enough audience to compete against the princes of the market, but I'm hoping TESO succeeds.

Developer: Zenimax Online Studios

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After writing this post I'm left somewhat mentally exhausted, a tiny bit hungry, and wondering what I missed. This barely even scratches the surface of the upcoming MMO scene. I probably left out more than I included.

In fact, if you're that commenter who just glances over the list to see if I left out Your Game and then, when you discover that I did---oh nefarious video game journalist of death!---you hop on here and yell at me for not listing Your Game, well I just want to say that I anticipated you. I saw you coming. And I laid a trap. (Okay, not really, but that would have been almost as cool as having the Super Power to reach through your monitor and slap that guy who is wrong on the internet....)

But seriously, if I did miss something that looks neat, innovative, fun, or just plain weird, speak up in the comment section. I know it's bad journalism-with-a-capital-J for me to ask you for your input, but I'm going to risk it. Because I'm brave like that.